Welcome to  Spotlight on Strategies Challenge!  Our S.O.S series  provides help, tips, and tricks for integrating DE media into your curriculum.

Visual Walkabout
PDF Version

Background
A visual walkabout’s purpose is to provide an opportunity to engage students in a concept that will be covered by providing them ‘sneak peaks’ of important components through the presentation of a series of images. Students can begin making connections and asking questions that will determine the flow of the unit.  This also allows educators to assess prior knowledge and address early misconceptions.

Example

• Print and post the following images around your room.  Some images can be printed on the same page
• Slave Auction Re-Enacted at St. Louis Courthouse and Chief Joseph of the Nez Percé tribe and African Americans Escape Slavery at Night
• Fort Sumter During the Bombardment
• A Union Artillery Lieutenant Colonel
• Lincoln reading Emancipation Proclamation
• A Map of Secession
• Civil War Issues
• Battle of Bull Run; newspaper telling of Confederate victory
• Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and The Battle of Gettysburg in the Civil War and  Soldiers’ National Cemetery – Gettysburg National Military Park 
• An American Red Cross nurse in uniform and Clara Barton, Founder of the American Red Cross
• Under each photo post a t-chart.  On the left hand side of the chart write “The Connection” on the right hand side write “Our Questions”
• Explain to students that you are about to begin a unit on the Civil War.  Ask students to share what they know about the Civil War with the group.
• Now, have students work in pairs or groups of 3 to visit a minimum of 5 of the images.  Together they should discuss the connection they believe it has to the unit of study and what questions the pictures may raise.  Each pair should list one statement and/or question on the provided T-Charts for each photo displayed

Challenge

• Search Discovery Education for 8-10 images that correlate with your unit of study.
• Provide a little information on what your unit of study is and have students visit image stations to provide evidence as to how the image connects and what questions it raises.

You can take the challenge by:

• Implementing this strategy and letting us know how it went by posting a comment below.
• Using this strategies in your grade level planning discussions and/or professional development and reporting your events. (Remember we consider an event anytime 3 or more educators gather together… doesn’t have to be in a computer lab… could be sitting around the lunch table)
• Photocopying the flier and distributing it in your colleague’s boxes and/or posting it to your own BulleDEN board.

So see other strategies in this series click here.  For a link to all the PDFs in this series click here.